Ben Scafidi: Keep it in the classroom

When the heavy, middle-age guy looks in the mirror, he usually never sees the extra ring around his waist, or the sag protruding from his arms and buttocks. He never realizes he is bloated and overweight.

Such is the case with America's public schools if you analyze data from the National Center for Education Statistics. The nation's professional education associations and unions will tell you we always need more money to hire more personnel. There are never enough people to staff our schools, they say.

But the numbers – just like that mirror – paint a very different story for those who want to take an honest look.

Since 1950, non-teaching personnel in our nation's public schools have soared a whopping 702 percent. That compares to an increase in student population of just 96 percent, according to a new report "The School Staffing Surge – Decades of Employment Growth in America's Public Schools."

Teachers have increased at a much smaller rate. The number of teachers increased by 252 percent – far short of the 702 percent increase in non-teaching personnel.

It should prompt all of us as taxpayers and many of us as parents to question the priorities of those who govern education in this country. They are putting too many education dollars in the wrong hands.

And that produces the wrong outcomes. Public high school graduation rates peaked around 1970, and data show that reading scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) fell slightly between 1992 and 2008. Math scores on the NAEP long term trend were stagnant during the same period. Some say achievement is down because "the kids are worse," but they have no evidence.

The trend of creating a system full of administrators such as deputy, associate, area, and assistant superintendents, assistant principals, curriculum coordinators, fleet coordinators, nutrition directors, frozen food purchasers, mechanics, grounds-keepers, psychologists, parent mentors and testing coordinators among dozens of other non-teaching personnel has been just as prominent over the past two decades.

It makes you scratch your head about the actual role of the public schools since there is so much spent on staff other than teachers relative to other nations. America spends a lower proportion of taxpayer funds on teachers – and more on other staff – than other wealthy nations. And American teachers feel demoralized since they are subject to increasing bureaucracy and paperwork – even before the current era of testing and accountability.

For example, in Hawaii, student enrollment in public schools jumped about 3 percent between 1992 and 2009 yet non-teaching personnel jumped almost 69 percent. In the District of Columbia, the student population declined almost 15 percent yet non-teaching personnel grew by 42 percent. And in Maine, the student population increased almost 11 percent yet non-teaching staff rose 76 percent.

If non-teaching personnel had grown at the same rate as America's students, we would have an extra $24.3 billion to educate our students each year. That would equal an annual $7,500 raise per teacher nationwide or the ability to award each child in poverty a $1,700 voucher to attend the school of their choice (or $6,800 per child if only 25 percent of them use it). Both of these reforms have strong support among parents and evidence they will help students.

But instead we continue to grow a bloated bureaucracy that results in continuing failure.

President Obama has pledged to hire 100,000 more math and science teachers to spur economic growth and have students compete. Perhaps if the president asked states to instead redirect money from non-teaching personnel to classroom teachers and vouchers, we might not only save money but help children learn.

Our target should always be educating children, not blindly adding jobs to an education bureaucracy. Our nation's public schools have added more education jobs than students for generations. It's time to put the focus back on helping children learn.

Ben Scafidi is a professor of economics at Georgia College & State University and a fellow at the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice. To read the study on school staffing, go to www.edchoice.org

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